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Dear Self-Referential Customer Complaint:

Recently, I wrote a story entitled "Why Am I A Writer.", the content of which I received in the mail today. Unfortunately, the story itself is not what I ordered. I called the 800 number to receive instructions to obtain my refund, and your customer service department instructed I write A Story To Them entitled "Dear Self-Referenctial Customer Complaint", of which I am delivering to you.

I just received a call back from your customer service department entitled, "Why Are You Not A Writer", which is what I initially ordered from your department. However, they first indicated that they needed me to return to you my "Dear Self-Referential Customer Complaint" story. However, if indeed this story was truly "Self-Referential", wouldn't that in itself indicate that I am Not A Writer, in which I orginally ordered?

The details of Why I Am Not A Writer are so different now than from your  initial response from your customer service department that I keeping this Self-Referential story and returning Why Am I A Writer that I mistakenly received. Why I received Why I Am A Writer As Opposed to Its Not The Writing that is Self-Referential makes no sense. Even a well respected magazine as your Self-Referential self should realize that.

Sincerely,

Forrest U. Continual
Chairmain, Unauthorized Access
Static Evolution

Why Am I a Writer (revised)

I am not a writer. The words are an army that I joined a while ago, and have been enlisted ever since.

 

Its an army which trains me to write this, but there’s no idea to fight for or history to change. These are the words of loose change between the cracks of the couch. Faulkner, Heminway, F. Scott Fitzgerald may have been the masters of the Art. My writing are the multi-colored smears and splatter on this pallet, in front of this ongoing blank canvas.

 

“I can’t do this anymore” I say to my words. “I’m tired of this. I’m tired of hearing you dictate what you want to hear; what they want to hear; what anybody wants to hear. Wouldn’t you agree?”

 

“It doesn’t matter to us. You’re the one doing all the work. We just sit back and enjoy the ride. All for free”

 

They were right. There's not much overhead to house them, feed them or keep them around. They float in my coffee, sit on my couch and watch my television and laugh at my at my day job. And I can’t ignore them. I keep coming back to them. If I told you the amount of unwritten stories, poems, narratives, ramblings, jibberish, yadaa, yadda, yadda that goes through my head….

 

“Hold on,” they say, interrupting my train of thought. What do you think doing right now?”

 

“I’m trying to tell you to get out of my life and leave me the hell alone! You tiny words are pain in my ass. You’ve been in my head all of my life, thwarting my career, causing me to drink and screwing up my relationships. Your driving me crazy.”

 

“Then why do you stick around with us? Why do you keep call us up on the phone, crawling back into bed with us and cuddle that gross laptop you’ve had since school? I see you writing with her.”

 

"But I have nothing to say!” I write, yelling at them. “This is an incredibly boring dialogue and I blame each and everyone writing me to do this! This is a pointless exercise in thought --- in anything --- and even more asinine in reading. What kind of writer would describe their love affair with writing as a metaphor for a love affair with writing?

 

"As usual, you ramble. I forgive you for that. And the good news is that we actually agree with you --- to some extent. However, the actual reading of this by anyone other than us are the ‘real’ words that are to blame. You couldn’t understand them, you didn’t love them, and we’re ones you’ve kept around, feeding us, and rolling around with in the sack. You actually love us and no one else.”

 

"I'm afraid you might be right, but it doesn’t solve this conversation-with-my-words situation. If I don’t have to use you anymore, if my life without you would help me get a job or a girlfriend, you’d be gone in a second. Plus, your boring me, and I don't want to use your words, my words, or anybody else’s words anymore, dammit! I’m not a writer! . Go back to wherever you came from, Okay?"

 

“Okay” they said. Then I heard them writing down how much they’d be laughing their asses off for the rest of my entire life.

FAPTHA Status Updates on Facebook from CNN's "In the On line"

FAPTHA is a type of Facebook operation used on the popular social-networking site which translates users' status-updates into nonsense, only understandable to sophisticated programs known as CAPTCHAs.

The process is incredibly complicated: users must observe what they do on a regular basis, exactly at the moment they occur, regardless of time or place, and post such experiences to Facebook IMMEDIATELY. Then, they are summoned to a CAPTCHA CHUTZPAH where they get light-hearted speech and a instructional account on FAPTHA status update rules.

The term "FAPTHA" comes from the contrived acronym "WTF is a CAPTCHA?" However, FAPTHA typically stands for "Facebook Automated Postings That Have Already too much in common". A common type of FAPTHA is a human who may sound more interesting as a string of warped characters with a highly distorted background that a normal CAPTCHAA would have trouble reproducing.

However, over time CAPTCHAs themselves have signed up for Facebook accounts, producing highly readable human code which makes it difficult to determine if they are actually humans pretending to be interesting machines or machines creating highly creative boring observations.

The following is a excerpt from one loney FAPTHA:

Asked human for information. Then laughed at him or her.

Downloaded driver over a bowl of cornflakes.

Too many hackers hitting my firewall. Oh, well.

That human-readable song I love so much:  is still stuck in my head.

I surprised that some human cannot add 3+4.

Tonite I'm going out with C:\MYSELF\STARBUCKS\DOWNLOAD\ANGEL_DELIGHTFUL_LATTE

I've already processed over a trillion friend denials.

I'm wondering if I could start a human translation contest with this: I'd like Suck my dik

If you were a CAPTCHA, then what would your name be?

I think I'm falling in love with the surge protector in the next room.

Tonite I'm reading Being Human on Facebook. Yes, the word "boring" does come to mind.

I met this other CAPTCHA at a party last night. No dice.

I wish human could clean out my CPU Fan. Enough is enough! I sound like a human Star Trek engine room.

Oh god, I got so autobotted last night.

Why does everyone call me a TEMP FILE?

Human operator audited by CPU cycles. I guess I'm not as young as I used to be.

Working a on a new gig for my backup job.

Theme party movie idea to be published on YouTube (would need work)

What is this someone's research project involving an indepedent movie using a handheld digital camera?  Usual chatter involves kids, grandkids, illnesses and operations and/or someone mutually known had died, the market, the golfers talk about golf (was at a dinner last night and the two guys next to me talked only about the local golf course, what holes were difficult, etc.), politics too although that is now more tame since the election is over with.  Sometimes, the talk turns to books, but rarely, or previous incarnations in the working world – usually the big shot types who want to impress you about their previous importance, not particularly relevant now, though, as we all slip down the drain.  Oh, travel too – the women love to talk about that, who’s been where, usually a game of one upmanship, and clothes, bargains.  Root canals usually elicit some sympathetic listening.  Food, food, food too, who’s cooked what, the restaurants someone has eaten at, local theatre too, movies, who’s seen what, disagreements whether it was good or bad. What impresses me is everyone seems to want to talk but no one really wants to listen.

angel

Uncle Pleasington

Years had slowly accumulated for Harold Rossburger who woke up one morning and saw how he had been buried in it. The shaping of his memories appeared as swells of snow, rounded mounds, and geometric landscapes formed by natures’ hands. As he grew, he had envisioned a kingdom of experience and knowledge, all explicitly defined, accessible, a guide to himself, his family and his friends. They would say, “Look at Rossburger, for example, for he made all the right decisions, and he solved this over here,” and so on and so forth, like he had done all his life. But not even the man himself could see the hand in front of his face,where he had expected it, for the   He noticed certain patterns, he could tell why they were formed that way by what remained underneath.  snow had come steady throughout the years; and their was no sign that it would cease. The expectation of a cyclical end was natural, given how we are in tune with the seasons. Yet, the final average of desires and consequences, beginnings and endings, procure a singular result of forward being, one whose those who marched unyielding march through the drifts  -- even in vacillation – grow stronger than those who sought purpose. And those who possessed neither were more of this earth in their singularity, witness to the accumulation of time, snowflake by snowflake, burying us all. There was only one world at this we knew without seeing: the one within.

Rossburger drew open the curtains in his eyes and saw the snow coming down hard, and pelt against his cheeks. The snow fell in a silent, consistent manner, almost logical in the way it should cover first the corners, then the steep lines of his mind, gradually rounding out the work of his past, filling in the things he loved, and then sweeping over those he would leave behind forever. He attempted to apply his final understanding against the snow’s burial, a testament to his way of thinking, but it was unnecessary: there was no compensation, nothing to attribute this task to, or any special role it governed. In brief, his conclusion was meaningless. In a brief instant he recalled the words of his Uncle Pleasington, “You’re the Captain” --- Rossburgers boyhood nickname– drawing attention to the power of his own will, self-accountability, captain of one’s own destiny. Rossburger loved his Uncle Pleasington and missed his presence, as the snow had buried him long ago.  a he Underneath, he knew what was left behind, both loved and unloved, those he would always cherish, and work never to be done again, all measured as far as his understanding would take him, and as much as his heart could bear. For Rossburger, the snow would conclude when an even blanket formed and the last entity it obscured would be himself, and would cease when the smallest of granular particles crested the top of his head. There, the surface of life would no longer be of his own, but the platform for some other; and all that this jouryman’s eye would see would be this snow surface as his own horizon,  never supposing that beneath lied a jumble of indelible sculptures created in love, in desperation, and in exile; Rossburger’s finished work that was never ending. How to walk across this horizon --- ,  The stranger would declare this day new and would launch his own journey  They would step afoot across such a surface in the full winter’s sunlight, unaware that beneath the snowfall, others awaited us –

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